Oceans For Emotions: You made me perfect; I got stupid all by myself

By Elaine Wheat
Oct. 12, 2012 at 5:12 a.m.

"The Lord is thy keeper: The Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night."

- Psalms 121: 5,6

I felt smitten as I left my dermatologist's office after having a bunch of sun-skin lesions removed by Dr. Lykes. I have been doing this "smitten" thing twice a year since 1977. I am getting sick of his sermon he gives me each time about fishing in the shade and using sun screen.

If I didn't respect him so much, I would have asked him to please point out an oak tree that I could wade out to in the bay, and I would fish under it. Hurting makes me hostile.

Feeling smitten, I looked up a smitten scripture in my Bible and found the one I used today.

I will admit that I doubted it today, when I first read it. Then, like always, I knew it was true, but only when I had gotten to the place where I was no longer hostile.

Then I remembered that in all of these smitten years, I have never had one skin cancer taken off of my right hand. I realized that was all God promised.

I have been smitten on my left hand to the point where after Dr. Lykes had cut it out twice, I had to go for six weeks of radiation for it to be gone.

This blue-eyed, blond-haired, Irish woman went to see my brown-eyed, brown-haired, German fishing friend for some compassionate words. All she said was, "Don't you wish you hadn't fished like that all those years?" I looked at her, smitten, and had to admit that if I had to do my life over, I would fish when and where I wanted and let Dr. Lykes clean me up later. All she did was look smitten and say, "Me, too."

Dear Lord, You made me perfect; I got stupid all by myself. OK, I'll wear sunscreen, hat, shirt and jeans from now on, and I will look for the shade you have prepared for me. I'll just wait for Heaven to fish in the sun and with your Son. Thanks for loving me, anyway.